(Part 2) Best products from r/ChapoTrapHouse

Okay, so to start.

'Raising the Floor' by Stern, 'Utopia for Realists' by Bregman and 'Basic Income' by Parjis provide a wealth of data on basic income, but also shorter work weeks and open borders. It details their cost and benefits as well as ways to fund them. 'Paradox Economics' by Parkinnen fuses these ideas with things like negative interest rates & free money.

These cover the funding, implementation & advantages of basic income. It also covers their relation to welfare states generally, to the work week and even somewhat to funding (Henry George & Tom Paine both proposed ground rents & basic income together a long time ago).

For more on the growth effects of Open Borders check out 'Immigration Economics' by Borjas, for worker ownership check out 'After Occupy' by Malleson and for shorter work weeks check out 'True Wealth' & 'The Overworked American' by Juliet Schor. 'Revisting Keynes' by MIT press provides a sort of neoclassical rebuttal to Schor, though that isn't the authors intent.

Borjas meant his book as a critique of immigration, but he even acknowledges open borders would lead to an 85% increase in the growth rate. Malleson summarizes the advantages of worker ownership. Juliet Schor documents the fall in leisure and its non relation to productivity.

For the growth effects and equity effects of ground rent taxation and its key features see: 'After the Crash', 'the Mason Gaffney Reader', 'The Corruption of Economics', 'Land and Taxation' by Mason Gaffney. Additionally, the edited volume 'Rent Unmasked' by Gaffney et al. is very helpful. The book a 'New Model of the Economy' by Hodgkinson provides a theoretical basis for all of this. Though it should be said that even Stiglitz endorsed it, as in his paper on the Henry George theorem and his book with Greenwald 'Creating a Learning Society.' Mason Gaffney's papers are all available for free on his website. 'Land Value Taxation' by Netzer provides a critical response, but then critical responses to those criticism. For a general theoretical perspective that merges g-rent perspectives with Marxian & Harvey type perspectives check out 'Reconstructing Urban Economics' by Obeng-Odoom. For a contrasting neoliberal perspective check out 'The Environmental Advantages of Cities' published by MIT press & 'Urban Labor Economics' by Cambridge University Press. Fred Harrison's books 'Ricardo's Law' & 'Boom Bust' are also good.

These cover the theoretical basis for ground rent taxation, its superiority to other forms of taxes, its effects on equity and stability, its ability to generate revenue, its relation to dead weight loss, to the commons, to replacement, to the environment, to land use, to zoning, to IP, to urbanization, to housing, to neo classical economics, to capital theory, to Marxian thought and to many many other things. Between Rent Unmasked, A New Model, After the Crash & Land and Taxation are the best combo.

For an application of Ground rent taxes that everyone likes check out 'The High Cost of Free Parking' by Donald Shoup and 'Markets in Virtue, Markets in Vice' by John Braithewithe. These detail the uses of vice & externalities taxes to change behavior generally. The Shoup book is highly acclaimed.

For work on the costs and benefits of drug legalization the best to read are Jeffrey Miron, Jefferson Fish, Ethen Nadelmann and others. Similarly, it shows the costs of legalization and the benefits of taxing and regulating it.

For intellectual property check out 'Against Intellectual Monopoly' by Boldrin & 'The Entrepreneurial State' by Mazzucatto & 'Creating a Learning Society' by Stiglitz.

These books cover IP, service economies and public funding for R&D and common goods.


For general perspectives see 'Alternatives to Capitalism' edited by Elster, 'Envisioning Real Utopias' by Erik Olin Wright, 'Inventing the Future' by Scrinek and 'Postcapitalism' by Paul Mason. These cover basic income & other policies for a radical world.

These detail complete world pictures with baisc income, the welfare state, worker ownership and so on, as wel as techno utopianism.

Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel also do some great work, from their original work on Parecon, the Political Economy of Parecon & Quiet Revolution in Welfare. But more recently Hahnel's 'Alternatives to Capitalism', 'Economic Justice & Democracy', 'Green Economics' & 'The ABCs of Political Econ.' They also have a wealth of facts the benefits of the commons & participatory.

Dean Baker has some great stuff like "Getting Back to Full Employment" and 'The Conservative Welfare State." Anthony Thirlwall's stuff on 'Growth & Development' and 'Growth in an Open Economy' give some good perspectives. Anwar Shaikh's 'Capitalism' is great. 'Distribution & Growth' after Keynes by Hein.
For general works on Sraffa, Keynes, Ricardo, Rents etc check out Ian Steedman, Ajit Sinha & JSL McCombie. I like the MMT people too like L. Randall Wray & Warren Mosler but the best is Steve Keen 'Debunking Economics' & 'Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis' because he acknowledges B of P constrained growth and the role of ground rents (either of which Mosler straight up doesn't understand).

These are great for upward redistribution, the data on growth in a common & social economy, the disadvantages of neo classical economics, the role of rents, profits & wages and the role of money & taxes generally.

On infrastructure issues here's some good stuff:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money

https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

This covers the costs of over development in infrastructure and the coming crisis it engenders.

https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21717976-after-50-years-campaigns-against-growth-nearly-half-city-zoned-single-family

https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21647614-poor-land-use-worlds-greatest-cities-carries-huge-cost-space-and-city

https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/11/economist-explains-0

These offer a tepid and admittedly neoclassical criticism of zoning and support for land taxes, but take them with a grain of salt.

For the nexus of the state & capitalism check out Kevin Carson's 'Mutualist Political Economy', 'Organization Theory: a Libertarian Perspective' and 'The Desktop Regulatory State.' Also Nick Ford's volume 'Abolish Work.'

These also cover the commons, mutual value theories and the role of the state in generating extractive rents.

On the commons check out Frederici & Ostrom, though this is farther afield.


Here are some links to the above:

http://www.masongaffney.org/publications.html

http://www.masongaffney.org/essays.html

http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/PrefaceHighCostFreeParking.pdf

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-to-fund-a-guaranteed-basic-income-2013-12

http://www.gbv.de/dms/zbw/836263790.pdf

http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/card-peri-jel-april-6-2016.pdf

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm

http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/slides/20120628_1830_creatingALearningSociety_sl.pdf

http://e1.newcastle.edu.au/coffee/pubs/wp/2001/01-09.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Economics-Counterintuitive-Phenomena-Misconceptions-ebook/dp/B017HTW78E

Well, it is a very large union with many different locals so it isn't fair to dismiss it out of hand. There are certainly some good locals with good politics and a good approach to organizing.

Overall, and especially at the highest levels, the union is very corporate and extremely into doing the bidding of shitty milquetoast Democrats. I think it makes sense for unions to engage politically, but they are very wedded to the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. Hillary's slogan, Stronger Together, was literally directly lifted from SEIU. There was scandal in a number of big locals when the union endorsed Hillary, as she has been no friend to labor (serving on Walmart's board, etc., etc.).

In addition, the union is overall not interested or invested in real worker struggle. Again, there are a few locals that go against this, such as 1199 New England, but in general the union is heavily against striking or industrial action. It greatly favors corporate partnership agreements, where the union creates pro-business preconditions to any collective bargaining agreement which effectively put certain things workers might want off the table so as to induce corporations to go easier on union organizing. It's a strategy that maybe made sense at one point but it severely limits the effectiveness of the union in being a real vehicle for worker power long-term.

I can talk more about this if folks want, just PM me. If you are really interested I would highly recommend two books by Jane McAlevey, a labor organizer and leader who served as director of Nevada's big SEIU local. She has real-life examples of the problems with SEIU but also talks about the good things workers have been able to accomplish within it. They are both good books - Raising Expectations (And Raising Hell) and No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age - but I would recommend the first very highly.

EDIT: I do want to say that if you are looking to organize, it is worth calling them. I think I am probably too cynical from direct involvement in a lot of organizing, and I want to be clear that my views are just that. This current moment for the labor movement is probably the worst it's been in since the Red Scare at least, and a lot of big unions are just turtling up and trying to weather the storm. SEIU, to its credit, has still prioritized organizing and spends a lot of money on organizing efforts even if they won't lead to obvious wins for the union. Also, they do have a lot of resources which can be very helpful to being successful at organizing. The IWW is cool, but it is tiny (less than 3,000 members globally, most of whom are at-large members whose membership has nothing to do with working anywhere, which is fine but very different than most unions) and it has no resources. There are cool things going on with it, but if you are looking for a more traditional union organizing effort where you will get support in building an organizing committee and moving to an election and then negotiating a collective bargaining agreement, I would call SEIU or another large union that has some involvement in your industry.

Soooo I guess I basically just walked back my initial comment. Shit's complex, everyone.

There's two books off the beaten path I recommend for insight that are outside the norm and provide good perspective on this:

American Made, which discusses the end of Hoover's administration in GREAT detail in the best of ways for the first couple of chapters and focuses how people on the ground interpreted it as well as explaining just how big a deal the WPA/CCC were. This book is GREAT for context. If you've heard chapo talk about the Bonus army, the book really helps put it in perspective among other things.

and

The Great Depression by David Shannon which is only about 180 pages or so, but is absolutely perfectly constructed. It's a combination of op eds and articles from DURING the great depression as well as context over what each article talks about. The combination of context along with a primary source is invaluable imo. You'll see things like the NYT trying to downplay the intense effects of the period, approaching on downright denial, the Great Depression in the midwest and West coast which often gets ignored, and articles on related issues like agricultural changes and such.

I'll add my two cents since this is something I've put some thought into, and will point to some other works you can check out.

I'll go a step beyond McCarthy here by saying I'm a fan of Zapffe's idea that self-awareness might be a mistake, a evolutionary trap:

>Such a ‘feeling of cosmic panic’ is pivotal to every human mind. Indeed, the race appears destined to perish in so far as any effective preservation and continuation of life is ruled out when all of the individual’s attention and energy goes to endure, or relay, the catastrophic high tension within.

>The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by overevolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment.

>In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.

I am very interested in the historical cases of feral children, and the reports of the attempts to re-integrate them after years away from other people. It seems there is a age past which the mind loses a certain plasticity of infancy and learning speech is no longer possible. Though of course the cases are rare and the reports often hobbled by the perceptions of their time, it is also of great interest to me that these children appear to stay at about the same general level of intelligence as the animals that raised them for the rest of their lives (if they were rescued after a certain developmental period). I wonder about the relationship between language and self-awareness and to what degree they depend upon each other. You could learn so much with just a handful of EXTREMELY UNETHICAL experiments.

Other fun notes:

Peter Watt's Blindsight is a recent sci-fi novel with aliens who work entirely "subconsciously" (without self-awareness) and are able to be much more efficient as a result.

People who speak languages with more colors are able to distingush more colors

There is a ton of interesting work out there that has been done about the ways that limited language can lead to limited thought, if you're interested.

I also recommend The Spell Of The Sensuous if this is interesting to you. One of my favorite books. Hopefully we can get to it in the book club some day.

SERIOUSLY YOU CAN BUY IT ON AMAZON! 😂😂😂 THIS IS SO FREAKING FUNNY! 😂😂😂 I'M ACTUALLY CRYING RIGHT NOW 😂😂😂

This was definitely true of the socdem policy in James Baldwin's lifetime. This is a good overview of how New and Fair Deal policy was deliberately constructed, as the NAACP said of the Social Security Act at the time, "like a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through." This on top of practices like redlining that seriously limited black people's ability to build a robust middle class with the GI Bill. While I agree with Leslie's thread and I think even the most mythical BernieBro wouldn't exclude PoC the way southern Democrats did, you can't completely dismiss that skepticism out of hand.

>Ah yes, the theory that profits belong to the worker

No, it's a theory that the ultimate source of profit lies in the asymmetry between the value that a worker adds to a product and the value of his wage. It's a descriptive, rather than normative, idea.

>financing, company good will, marketing, sales, product development, all of that just runs itself

Nobody here is claiming that those forms of labor "run themselves." Surplus value is extracted from all kinds of labor and laborers.

>shareholders decide its worth paying a CEO billions

Surplus value has nothing to do with CEOs in particular. It's the mechanism by which capital valorizes itself. Whether the management is being done by a petit-bourgeois owner, by a single manager, or by a team, is utterly irrelevant.

>wiki article that internet teenagers found fascinating

I'm not a teenager. And since Wikipedia is beneath you, here's the original, in HTML and print.

If you're starting to read his books, I recommend picking up ["The Holocaust Industry"] (https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1781685614&pd_rd_r=97d5364c-5a0c-11e8-a956-456fc52f333f&pd_rd_w=16qEm&pd_rd_wg=1g1Mc&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=7967298517161621930&pf_rd_r=0T0GZ21H6HQKNTF72WSZ&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=0T0GZ21H6HQKNTF72WSZ), ["Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict"] (https://www.amazon.com/Image-Reality-Israel-Palestine-Conflict-Revised/dp/1859844421/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526587388&sr=1-1&keywords=image+and+reality+of+the+israel-palestine+conflict&dpID=414Zbglcz4L&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch), and [his most recent book] (https://www.amazon.com/Gaza-Inquest-into-Its-Martyrdom/dp/0520295714).

"The Holocaust Industry" isn't as provocative now as it is was when he first wrote the book, but it still solidly holds up today. An troubling insight into the "exploitation of Jewish suffering," as he states. It's fairly short compared his other works, but that's the work which brought him into the spotlight.

"Image and Reality" is a good starting point with Finkelstein on understanding the conflict, as he dissects, piece-by-piece, common false talking points and assertions over the conflict (Joan Peters, Benny Morris, Abba Eban, amongst others); his introduction to the book's second edition provides an excellent overview of the history.

Though, it'd be an understatement not to recommend his latest book. By far the largest amount of footnotes, and he affirms by his maxim of making the book as well-sourced and truthful "as is humanly possible". He details the Mavi Marmara incident, Operation Cast Lead, and Operation Protective Edge, and the inconsistent reporting of human rights organizations. The book's final statements, especially, cut deep. Certainly his best work, indeed his magnum opus.

Sometime later on I might go through "Beyond Chutzpah" (it's labeled as his "sequel" to "The Holocaust Industry"), but the three books above are a great start at the very least.

Let me summarize the conversation as I see it so far.

The majority of your first post consists of descriptions of a number of simplifying assumptions economists make, and when and why they break down. You follow this up with an argument that economic models may become useless when they are made public and markets act on the information these models provide.

All of that is fine, and I can't find anything glaring that I disagree with. However, you then go on to state that modeling human behavior with incentive based frameworks is unjustified due to the simplifying assumptions they require, and that we should rely on more psychology and moral philosophy instead.

I responded that moral philosophy is not in the business of predicting human behavior, whereas economics and psychology are i.e. that moral philosophers make normative claims whereas economists and psychologists make descriptive claims (many economists also make normative claims).

Most of your second post consists of a collection of criticisms of mainstream economics methodology. However you do briefly address Playing Fair's (the book I'm reading) claim, that incentive structures can be useful in modeling the development of law.

> The problem is that if utility is truly invariant, as it must be for economics & as in stated by revealed preference theory, then it is the method of evaluation all the way down, what varies are the objects evaluated within & between in. But this would mean property laws are judged according to a utility, perhaps something like a Rawlsian social contract (itself nonsense) and then economic objects are evaluated within that regime and then are ranking according to utility. But, now you already have the issue that the monetary utility function which equilibrates the utility function of the property laws chosen may be different from that which would rank the objects monetarily evaluated judged according to a different utility function (use or survival) or the one assumed by economic theory.

The author Ken Binmore claims that laws can be well represented as a bargaining solution to a game. He's pretty explicit that although his models attempt to incorporate the players' moral beliefs, the models' predictions are amoral (they can predict universally undesirable outcomes).

As to whether his models are accurate or whether is simplifying assumptions are too strong, these are questions that can be resolved empirically.

My intuition is that game theory and incentive frameworks will prove themselves to be useful for describing the development of legal systems.

Fun fact about Mnuchin's wife:

“In Congo’s Shadow” is the inspiring memoir of an intrepid teenager who abandoned her privileged life in Scotland to travel to Zambia as a gap year student where she found herself inadvertently caught up in the fringe of the Congolese War.

A ‘skinny white muzungu with long angel hair’, Louise was an anomaly in darkest Africa. Posted to a tiny village on the shores of Lake Tanganyika just miles from Congo, she became immersed in a remote world of unsurpassed natural beauty rife with hidden danger. Life was at first idyllic. As the weeks passed, Louise formed close friendships with the Bemba people, learnt their language, and created a little school under the Mukusi tree. Still struggling with the untimely loss of her mother, Louise found comfort in her bond with Zimba, a six-year-old orphan girl who she came to love as her own.

https://www.amazon.com/Congos-Shadow-Louise-Linton/dp/1522708049/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467818967&sr=8-1&keywords=louise+linton

"Why Socialism?" by Albert Einstein is an editorial that is a good (and short) read.

Jacobin Magazine has an "ABCs of Socialism" primer that is also fairly short and accessible.

Kropotkin's "The Conquest of Bread" is another good one -- and there is a version of it available for free on Amazon if you have a Kindle or the phone app. It has a handful of weird formatting/editing errors, like page numbers still being present in there.

There's a "crash course" essay on GitHub that is community-maintained; I haven't read through it, so I can't really speak for it, but the authors have a shitload of sources listed in there. Based on the stuff in the parent directory, I'm guessing the content is more SocDem-focused.

Marxists.org has a large library of Marx and Engels works in eBook formats if you're feeling ready for the harder stuff. Capital and ye olde Manifesto are the main highlights.

Black Socialists of America maintains another resource guide, but their site seems to be down at the moment. Edit: BSA's site is back up. Looks like they redesigned since the last time I looked at it, too.

It definitely isn't. Check out the Smithfield Foods union campaign for an inspiring example of justice being delayed but not denied. I highly recommend Jane McAlevey's second book for a good narrative of the fight (as well as discussion of corporate alliance SEIU vs. worker militant SEIU plus the Chicago teachers' strike fight) and some hope for the future.

thank you make sure to buy my book for more great advice

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gorilla-Mindset-Control-Thoughts-Emotions-ebook/dp/B0100Q4S7E

The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill wrote a good book on Blackwater.

Here's a good Primer video, and yes, it's literally sponsored by Call of Duty.

Yes. It’s already on the Amazon best selling list.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0520295714/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526659780&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=norman+finkelstein&dpPl=1&dpID=51W9tlNhgCL&ref=plSrch

It's really impossible to understand Zizek without understanding Lacan. So much of his books are derived from and critiquing Lacan. Zizek, himself, has written several introductory books on Lacan, but I think he misses the mark. The best place to start would be A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and despite it's pompous title it's relatively harmless. After that I would suggest The Sublime Object of Ideology, his first book, is also a good entry place to his ideas. At this point I think his ideas would be decipherable and all his books readable, so this is just a list of books in no specific order which I think are most relevant to his thought - The Parallax View, In Defense of Lost Causes, The Plague of Fantasies, and his long essays for Lacanian Ink.

The two books Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer and Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank pair extremely well and are required reading for anyone that wishes to understand how US politics has been shifted so far to the right these past decades. Dark Money, while extremely informative regarding the propaganda of billionaires, largely gives a pass to the Democratic party which Listen, Liberal reveals as being undeserved.

Currently making my way through Thomas Sowell's work. Brilliant man, highly recommended!

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730

If you're American, I think the stuff here is good.

For me as an Indian, this book was extremely powerful: https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Loves-Good-Drought-Districts/dp/0140259848

This sub needs a healthy dose of good old-fashioned Stoicism:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Like-Roman-Emperor/dp/1250196620/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=stoic+philosophy&qid=1558028807&s=gateway&sr=8-6

Have you read Locked In ?

It's basically a critique of Michelle Alexander's book on the causes of mass incarceration.

I haven't read it, but I've seen a couple of essays about it in liberal and libertarian circles. I don't really know if the critique is valid or not.

see here some links if you are interested:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/02/09/everything-you-think-you-know-about-mass-incarceration-is-wrong

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/10/how-we-misunderstand-mass-incarceration

Most of us in this forum agree with you though, so who are you yelling at? If you want to learn more there are plenty of excellent books that you can check out from the library

​

https://www.amazon.com/Second-Amendment-Biography-Michael-Waldman/dp/1476747458/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=RVJHMPTQVEXH9Y9GDMFB

> Dating is 100% based on mindset

I'd like to introduce you all to a book by my favorite Mike

Not saying FDR didn’t work to improve the lives of the working class, but it’s important to note that he didn’t really challenge the position of white supremacism in American politics, and so the New Deal disproportionately benefited white people while ignoring many black communities.

I highly recommend everyone read When Affirmation Action was White, by Ira Katznelson.

You're damn right. If you like the essay, I have to plug the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Roosting-Chickens-Reflections-Consequences/dp/1902593790

He just goes off on the most scathing critique of US empire you've ever read in an extended written ramble, then offers a year-by-year breakdown of every single action of the United States Military from 1776 - 2003 (when the book was published), including the numerous atrocious incursions on Native communities, and offers another year-by-year breakdown of every illegal US action from 1776-2003. Really great book, one of my favorites, and he lost his job at CU Boulder over it.

Free for your kindle:

https://smile.amazon.com/Conquest-Bread-Alekseevich-kniaz-Kropotkin-ebook/dp/B002RKSJ04/

No. Lacan was working in the same field and built upon the work of Freud. I think they're referring to Zizek being a philosopher/theorist rather than an analyst. There a nice talk between Zizek and psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz where they discuss this a bit. There's quite a significant difference, for example, between Zizek discussing popular culture and Bruce Fink talking about clinical technique.

https://www.amazon.com/Spell-Sensuous-Perception-Language-More-Than-Human/dp/0679776397

favorite non-fiction book, warped my perception of the world for weeks after reading it

Garfield is from a Virgil thing, Jared innocence project, and elevators are a twitter thing. [X]cel is a Reddit thing that the dry boys picked up on, Gorilla mindset is Cernovich's ethos and Metal Gear is the most apt cultural zeitgeist of our time.

Yeah I was gonna make that point lul

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0385535597

Betsy is prominently featured.

Well since you so better at reading than me, you should check out this book by Stigler's protegee: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730

buy the book

no, it's a sub for fans of this book